


What We Do

by RapidashPatronus



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Genre: DEAR LORD THE ANGST, F/M, Gen, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, rcvalentine, the rebelcaptain network
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 05:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 17,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9705731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RapidashPatronus/pseuds/RapidashPatronus
Summary: The Death Star II has been destroyed, the Emperor is dead, and the Rebels are celebrating. But Jyn, a changed woman, awaits court martial following a catastrophic mission on a distant planet, while Cassian has not been seen or heard from for three years. The riot in Monument Plaza following news of Emperor's death, though, is a catalyst for something nobody could predict. Except K-2SO.





	1. Liberty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fitzsimmonsavengers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitzsimmonsavengers/gifts).



> This is my first ever fanfic and I'm very nervous and unsure about it but please please do let me know what you think!
> 
> I wrote this for the lovely, wonderful fitzsimmonsavengers on Tumblr as part of the Rebelcaptain Network Secret Valentine Exchange. Happy Valentine's Exchange, my "TheCaptainLovesTheDaughterOfGalen-Tine"! I've really enjoyed working on this for you for the last month and I hope you enjoy reading it! xxxxx

From up here, the tiny bursts of light over Endor were silent. Almost shrouded in night but for a slice of bright emerald scything down one side, the sanctuary moon resembled nothing so much as a rich fruit someone had just started to peel. Fireworks like fireflies trembled and skittered busily across the surface.

From up here, where they made no sound, Bodhi could enjoy them. The flight deck of Home One was almost silent itself, deserted amid the celebrations. Muffled noises of jubilation came from somewhere else on board, but not here. Here there was just him, gazing down at Endor’s silent flares.

A door; footsteps; a hand appeared on his shoulder. “We just heard,” said the deep, familiar voice. “Luke made it off. He’s ok. He’s alive.”

That was good. Bodhi nodded. General Calrissian squeezed his shoulder briefly and let his hand fall. The fireworks went on below them.

“There’s more to do,” said Bodhi eventually.

Calrissian laughed: a broad, hearty, golden laugh, like a corsair in a casino. “Always, Captain, always. Sure was real nice of the Empire to build another one for you.” He grinned. “Since you missed the first one going up, and everything. All that hard work and you missed it first time.”

Bodhi obliged him with a chuckle. “Yeah. Tell them I caught it this time. No repeats needed.”

“I’ll pass on the memo. Come on, Bodhi, you’re missing the party.”

The younger man took a deep breath, turning from the viewport at last. “They’ll set a date now, won’t they.” It wasn’t a question. “Now that the ‘immediate threat is stabilised’.”

The general’s pirate grin slid away. “She’ll be fine,” he answered without conviction. “Whatever else, she’s still a hero of the Rebellion.”

“I think that one’s long since run out.”

Calrissian looked away. There was nothing to say.

“Go on,” said Bodhi. “Don’t miss the party.” He looked back out at the glittering moon. “I’ll be along.”

 

* * *

 

Bodhi didn’t remember being afraid of her when they’d first met. Catatonic and dishevelled, like him, she had at the very least been a long way down the list of things to be afraid of at the time. Later on, of course, he’d witnessed her rage and fire, but as a torch, not a furnace. It had guided people, and he hadn’t felt afraid of it.

But the woman who lay inert on the cot at the far end of the brightly lit cell, eyes fixed dully on the ceiling, made Bodhi feel afraid.

“Timer started,” the guard muttered to him, and the door slid shut behind him. She made no sign she had even noticed him arrive.

Bodhi took a deep, shaking breath, released it slowly, and started across the cell toward her. She shifted minutely, and his step faltered.

“They – they made it,” he told her. “It’s done. General Solo’s team is still down on Endor, a ground squad’s gone down already, they’ll bring them back tomorrow. And Commander Skywalker made it out ok. He’s safe. It’s all done.”

No response came.

“So… so what I mean is I guess you’ll hear soon,” he finished lamely.

Court martial. The tiniest tilt of her head in agreement, or acknowledgement, or something else he couldn’t know. Bodhi took another shaky breath and forced himself to move the rest of the way over to her, to sit on the edge of the cot, his back to her, the sealed door in front of him. It looked a long way away for such a small room.

“I’m – I’m just going to sit here for a bit,” he said muttered, blinking furiously at the floor, wondering if she could hear his pulse racing, smell his adrenaline, sense him working out how fast he could get to the door if he needed to. He felt like he would flinch if she so much as spoke.

Then her hand appeared quietly in his, and gripped it tightly. He squeezed back as hard as he could. He didn’t need to look around to know that, silent and still, Jyn Erso was still staring at the ceiling.


	2. Patient History

As Bodhi made his way back to his room, he could still hear the faint sounds of the party. Some way down a corridor, he encountered a couple kissing drunkenly, passionately. He thought he recognised one of the women but they were far too involved in each other to even notice him pass.

He reached his room at last and closed the door, sitting for a while with the light off.

Bodhi realised of course that there must have been a moment when light had first come from darkness and he’d realised for the first time that he was still alive. He didn’t remember it. He remembered instead many moments after that time. Painful moments, curiously numb moments, moments when he thought the ringing in his ears would never fade.

He remembered Baze standing over him, gruffly attentive. He remembered wondering who else had made it out, remembered trying to ask and that words wouldn’t come out, and that Baze had just rested his hand on him until he floated back to sleep.

He remembered that the first he saw of Kay was as the droid was leaving, remembered that, of all the details that might have stood out to him about his clean, shiny casing in that fraction of a second before he vanished behind the door, it was that the Imperial insignia was absent from his shoulder.

He remembered someone trying to explain his survival to him, and remembered not caring how or why he was still alive, only that he was, and the rest simply washed over him in a bassy fuzz.

He remembered trying his new leg out for the first time, the tiny pinprick shocks with which the medical droid had tested the toes, the narrow green line he had been told to focus on as he slowly walked the width of the white floor.

He remembered Chirrut standing with him, laughing about something, a long scar holding down one corner of the his mouth, and remembered that he himself had laughed too, and how it had felt foreign and heady. He remembered that they had been admonished and hushed by the medi-droid and that Chirrut had gone out, still laughing.

He remembered seeing Kay leave again.

Eventually, he’d been allowed out of the med centre, debriefed, greeted ridiculously in an embarrassing, embarrassed sort of way. He’d learned to talk to people again, learned to show them he liked being talked to, shaken off the peculiar distance and awe with which people treated him.

There had been the day Jyn had appeared in front of him. He remembered how she’d tensed with alarm when he had embraced her, and how she’d then carefully and deliberately put her arms around him too for a moment, before going out wordlessly, looking like she had never left Scarif.

And he remembered hearing, a long time later, that Cassian was awake. He remembered standing around his bed with Chirrut and Baze and Kay. Remembered most of all trying not to look horrified as the warm voice that had once lit his way back to sanity on Jedha now stumbled and stretched out to gather up words like so many scattered leaves.

 

* * *

  


Jyn had begun volunteering for things. She’d brushed off accolades and admiration, thrown herself instead at every venture, every scrappy team, every wild mission she could. She’d joined scout teams, assessing potential new base sites in the most inhospitable systems. She had run from system to system chasing assassins, hounding double agents, using brutal guerrilla tactics to force the enemy from every corner of the galaxy. Her drive was unstoppable, invaluable, terrifying.

She made the Council nervous, but with the Empire still powerful, the Rebellion had to take what it could. And if Saw Gerrera’s volatile ward was prepared to take on the risks that others’ consciences or courage could not consider, then the Alliance was obliged to accept her as a gift to the cause. Colonel Peluan had had her made Lieutenant, trusted her with a command she was too free with.

Bodhi was having dinner together with Chirrit and Baze in their quarters, as he often did, when they’d heard her arrive back from a mission one time. She’d passed outside the door, hollering some sort of order over her shoulder, when a crashing noise suggested she had simply thrown a bag of kit down as she went. Shortly, a series of scuffling sounds implied that someone else was hastily picking it up and dragging it along in her wake. Some petrified cadet who’d probably thought they’d made it big when they got to go out on the ground with Lieutenant Erso, Hero of Rogue One. No doubt the poor kid had long since re-evaluated that belief.

“She’s just not afraid of dying,” Baze had commented. The thought might once have impressed him, but not now.

Bodhi had stared into his cup miserably. “She already has.”

“I am rather more troubled,” said Chirrut, turning his face to the ceiling, “by the idea that she is afraid not to.”

The three of them had been to see Cassian in the med centre before dinner. He’d been improving steadily over the last month or so; his physical injuries, at least, were almost completely healed, and even conversation seemed to run more smoothly, the gaps less frequent, the lexicon less erratic. But then Kay – ever-present at Cassian’s bedside – had with typical lack of tact remarked on Jyn’s continued failure to visit, and the stricken silence that followed had been agony. It was the look on his friend’s face, though, that still made Bodhi wince to recollect even now.

Kay had quickly scrambled to cover his error, made excuses, remarked on her current contributions to the Alliance, garbled forth statistics of her success, and then he’d finally caught Baze’s glance and awkwardly segued the topic of his monologue instead, with inelegant precision, to the quality of the sheets.

  


* * *

  


It was almost a year before Cassian was declared fit to serve, and not without considerable argument for the case on his part. Fighting for the Rebellion was all he had and all he knew how to do; sitting still and submitting to careful, concerned conversations with old colleagues and awed junior officers was a way of life to which he was ill-suited.

It took weeks of tedious examinations, a frustrating, patronising process that had left him feeling shattered and impotent. It seemed to him to mainly consist of naming images: tree, planet, child, boot – “try again, Captain” – frak, _blaster_ … He had grown fractious, his pride in tatters, his temper close to combustion point, but finally he’d made it, finally he’d been marked as fit for duty.

And after all that, where had Peluan placed him? The Imperial Centre. Coruscant. Of course. Stable, secure, too strong to be a target for the Alliance right now. He was an intelligence officer after all; he certainly wasn’t too stupid to recognise that a low-profile placement in secure enemy territory came with much less strategic risk attached than one in some troubled and disputed corner of the Outer Rim. No, the Imperial Centre was a good place to send someone next to useless. The knowledge stung.

And so instead of sitting still on an Alliance starship he was sitting still on Coruscant. But he knew how to use his time. He watched and listened and quietly filed away all he saw and heard, and he tried hard to keep his mind in the present.

  


* * *

 

The present. Bodhi realised he had been sitting in the darkness of his room for a long time; the distant sounds of celebration had finally abated, though how long ago, he was unsure. He wasn’t tired, still, but the thought of Jyn’s hand silently gripping his took away all his will to move. It was almost less bearable than believing she felt nothing at all.

Court martial. And soon, now. He didn’t doubt that what he’d said to General Calrissian had been right – she’d used up her “hero of the Rebellion” card a long time ago. Her recklessness had caused problems in the past but they’d been overlooked, allowed to pass with a reprimand, or at worst, on one occasion, the threat of demotion. The near-catastrophe on Utapau, however, was too great a misdemeanour to overlook. They’d lost good soldiers.

Well, he’d speak for her at the trial, if they’d let him. They had to know she’d acted with the best of intentions - she _must_ have done - he was sure now that she wasn’t so much changed from the girl he’d followed onto Scarif four years ago.

Was it really four years since they’d spoken? Three since Cassian had left for Coruscant, her name unsaid? Bodhi wondered if word of her incarceration would reach the spy, assuming he was still out there. Probably it wouldn’t. Probably it shouldn’t. He sighed in the darkness and began to get ready for bed.


	3. Communications

A perk of higher ranks, such as Chirrut and Baze had acquired through their work in training young recruits in combat, was that you got better quarters. Better quarters meant a food preparation area, which in turn meant a little more space and privacy, if you needed it. Chirrut was a fine cook, but he liked eating with others in the mess hall on Home One; conversation came easily to him and he seemed to know every single person by name, remembered details about their lives, made them laugh, advised them gently. While few things felt as isolating as sitting in a crowded hall and hearing only a muffled hum, Baze felt that observing Chirrut’s easy engagement, reading his smiling lips intently as he joked and guided, made the experience worth enduring.

This morning, however, they’d opted for breakfast in seclusion. They had little doubt that the countless excesses and indiscretions of the previous night’s celebrations meant that the mess hall would be largely void of life this morning.

Normal duty would resume shortly, when the Alliance would collect the ground squad from Endor, pull out of orbit, and once again return to standard shifts without the unfamiliar factors of day and night. They’d woken early and gone up to the Bridge to watch the nearby star pull around and cast its first light across the visible part of Endor’s verdant surface. It was the first real sunrise they’d seen since abandoning Echo Base months ago, and now, they were heading back to their quarters to enjoy a meal that for once classed unmistakably as breakfast.

Suddenly, Chirrut stopped in his tracks, his grip on Baze’s elbow tightening. He sensed Baze turn to him quizzically. “Something’s happened,” he explained mildly.

 _Some explanation_ , thought Baze drily.

“It feels like unrest,” Chirrut went on. “Near to a friend.” His expression clouded with concern. “Come on.”

Baze found himself pulled by the elbow back in the direction they’d come from, the blind man dragging him along with determination. “Where are we going?” he called, leaping forward a couple of steps to lead from Chirrut’s side again, to see his mouth move, shaping visible sound from the dullness.

“Information!”

 

* * *

 

 

“The riot has been going on all evening,” said the comms officer, reading off her data pad. She looked tired but unperturbed, if a little surprised at their interest. “We’ve had a report that it was precipitated by civilians celebrating Palpatine’s demise, tearing down the statue in Monument Plaza. Turned nasty after that. Imperials opened fire on the crowd to break it up.” She looked back up at the two men. “It’s an unpleasant disturbance but it’s highly localised; at present we’ve no reason to believe it represents any significant danger to the Rebellion.”

Baze’s voice came sharply. “Who sent you these reports?”

The comms officer glanced again at her data pad. “We got it from a trader who flew out not long after it all kicked off. Not an official source but we didn’t think it was of sufficient consequence to request confirmation.”

“And from whom,” asked Chirrut calmly, “would you request such confirmation, if you were to do so?”

The officer stared at him impatiently. _She_ hadn’t had a fun night like _some_ people. Someone had to be on cover to receive these damn transmissions and look who drew the short skycorn stem. These two grizzled warrior types standing over her and demanding information on some minor civil unrest far from the Rebellion’s centre of operations was the last thing she needed. They’d probably been partying all night while she’d had to sit around counting down until someone came to relieve her. But she knew who they were, and knew better than to argue, so she turned her attention back to her data pad.

“I’ll find out for you,” she said with barely-concealed impatience. “We’ll have a record here somewhere – I’ll check who we’ve got posted there.”

A large hand smacked the data pad from her hold and sent it skidding away across the floor. The officer looked up in shock into Baze’s huge, bearded face snarling down at her. “Captain _Andor_ is posted on Coruscant!” he bellowed at her. “How do we know that and you don’t?” He ignored Chirrut’s pacifying hand on his forearm and went on. “You think something like this goes on and he wouldn’t have sent a transmission by now if he could?!”

She was frozen to the spot now; without the data pad in her hand, she looked too young for her uniform. “I – I don’t know,” she stammered. Her eyes were wide. “It’s just been me on duty tonight! I don’t know!”

“So when you say ‘WE’ didn’t think it was of consequence-” Baze snapped, but Chirrut pulled him away from the terrified girl.

“Page whoever you need,” Chirrut instructed her quickly but without chagrin. “Attempt to reach Captain Andor and if you fail to establish contact, request immediate extraction of Alliance forces from the Imperial Centre.”

The girl nodded frantically and scrambled to the floor to reclaim her pad as the two men hurried out of the room.

 

* * *

 

 

Kay-Tuesso was troubled. It had occurred to him on a number of occasions that his programming in strategic analysis might have been unintentionally compromised in the course of his reconstruction. There had, after all, been a lot of circuits to replace, and the technicians would without question have had an extremely difficult time attempting to trace the various pathways by which he had re-routed his processes when under fire. It was, he surmised, therefore entirely probable that certain more specific elements of his programming had been lost.

The reason that this currently troubled him was that he was currently presented with two pieces of information, two scenarios, each of which in isolation would cause him some concern, but when combined formed a still more concerning contradiction. He was also troubled because he was certain that he was failing to allow for something quite major. But to return to the contradiction in hand:

Item 1: Alliance command had failed to anticipate a significant strategic risk in the wake of the destruction of the Death Star and the Emperor: namely, that the Imperial Centre on Coruscant would become unstable following the termination of both its key leader and its primary weapon. Furthermore, intelligence and transmissions had been stripped back to skeleton staffing at the precise point in time when such instability was almost inevitable.

Had this information come from another source, he might have dismissed it as too unlikely. However, in this case, Item 2 had to be considered in parallel:

Item 2: Baze and Chirrut were, based on a limited sample of historic data and thenceforth on an extreme-value extrapolation of several thousand additional simulated stochastic scenarios, reliable sources of information. The odds of their deliberately telling him false information were exceedingly low. The odds of their being mistaken were higher.

As things stood, he was therefore obliged to weigh up two potential scenarios.

Scenario 1: Chirrut and Baze were mistaken. Implication: no risk.

Scenario 2: The Alliance had indeed made a major strategic oversight. Implication: significant risk to Cassian.

On balance, he liked the first scenario better, but preference had no place in his processes as he calculated the comparative benefits of action and inaction. The implications of the second scenario were, on balance, too severe to disregard. Plus, Item 3: He hadn’t seen his friend for almost three years.

Conclusion: act.

 

* * *

 

 

“Timer started,” said the guard listlessly, and the door slid open again. Jyn lay in exactly the same position. Bodhi wondered if she ever moved.

It seemed strange to him that after such lengthy estrangement, he was talking to her twice in less than one full day-cycle of the green moon below them. His heart raced again as the door slid shut behind him, but he remembered the pressure of her hand in his and reminded himself that she was still Jyn. Dull-eyed, short-haired and rancorously mute, but still Jyn; still Jyn and she would not hurt him. He hoped. He realised suddenly that he wasn’t sure where she stood on “don’t shoot the messenger”. But she had to be told.

“Jyn, I’m back,” he began pointlessly, his voice feeling high and unnatural. Again, the barest shift, the acknowledgement of his presence. He forced himself to cross over to her and sit by her as before. “Jyn,” he tried again, voice still reedy, eyes fixed on the door opposite. “I had to come and tell you, because I don’t know, I don’t know whether you care or, or, or why I have to tell you this, really, I just – I felt like I have to, because of, you know, everything. I thought.” He felt ridiculous. What was he saying? What had he inferred? He’d misread everything. He was an idiot. “I mean I thought you and. But anyway. We all. Anyway.” He was panicking, babbling – this was a terrible mistake. Why was he even here? She didn’t need this on top of everything. But his mouth was still going. “It’s just, it’s Cassian, he –”

He thought he heard her breath catch. He could have imagined it.

“Well, he’s been posted in the Imperial Centre, I mean you probably know, I don’t know, but, they, well. This morning. Evening, for them, obviously. Or not obviously. But anyway it is. Is evening there, I mean, not is obvious. But it’s gone bad there, really bad, and they can’t get in touch with him, and, and. Kay told me.”

He _wasn’t_ imagining it. He didn’t dare look at her as he finished.

“They… they say it’s too risky, they aren’t going to get him out.”

The stillness behind him was charged, taut. He trembled. And then, low and dangerous:

“Say that again, Bodhi.”

It was the first time she’d spoken to him since walking off the ship on Scarif. It was, he thought, the first time she’d ever said his name at all. It sounded stronger in her voice than it ever did in his. He decided to try to be worthy of it.

“Cassian’s in danger and they aren’t going to help.” He looked around at her, finally, and realised at last why he was there. Pleadingly, he told her, “I don’t know what to do.”

Her eyes met his, and he didn’t look away. And suddenly - impossibly - she _blazed_.


	4. Space

The timer was nowhere near finished when guard heard the door slide open. He turned to see, and the shock barely registered before Jyn Erso’s fist landed heavily on his jaw, followed swiftly by her knee connecting with his solar plexus. He crumpled, breathless and sightless, gasping uselessly as she delivered one more viciously efficient kick to his side. Far above the whiteness of his pain he was dimly aware of being lifted high by a pair of metal hands, but he was too busy trying to catch his breath to hear the door slide and click once more.

Bodhi gave a cry as Kay flung the beaten guard into the cell, but Jyn was already off and running, tearing down the corridor towards the flight hangar. He ran after her, all his terror reawakened. She was mad. She had to be mad. And somewhere underneath, he must be mad, too, because hadn’t he known, really, that this would happen?

The denizens of Home One were still recovering from their celebrations, and the corridors were empty, barring the madwoman racing ahead of him and the dull, heavy steps of Kay-Tu behind him. And of course she needed a pilot. Of course. They were going to Coruscant. It was what they _did_ , wasn’t it?

“She isn’t as unpredictable as she’d like to think,” came Kay’s voice with satisfaction from close behind him. “You’re very slow. Do you want me to carry you?”

Bodhi bridled and ran faster. _Kay, you scheming git of a droid_ , he thought. _You knew, you_ knew _._

As he finally rounded the corner to the hangar, he saw Jyn hurling blasters and grenades chaotically into a pack. She pointed with her free hand at a stolen Imperial transport shuttle. “That one,” she shouted over her shoulder.

The wired join in his leg ached as he headed breathlessly for it, Kay at his side.

“Oh, good,” said the droid flatly. “A T-4a. Let’s fly a T-4a onto Coruscant right after the Emperor dies. That will go well.” He reached out an extension and flipped the hatch open. As Bodhi scurried inside, Kay headed on across the hangar to the control desk at the far end. “It actually won’t go well,” he called out as he went. “I just thought I’d clarify.”

Bodhi found his way up to the cockpit and buckled himself rapidly into the pilot’s seat. Any minute now, someone was bound to see them, the ground team flying back in from Endor perhaps, or the delegation sent to the hangar to welcome them back. They had to get out fast.

 _Ok, calm down, calm down._ He took a breath and steadied himself, surveying the Imperial flight controls in front of him.

Ok, easy.

Yeah. Yeah, he could do this, no problem. These controls were barely any different from a Zeta-class –

The world ignited. White-hot and deafening, the explosion seemed to go on forever. Artillery fire roared all around him, inside him, and he felt the impact of the conflagration like a boulder hitting every inch of him at once. The guns went on and on, metallic and furious, pounding a tattoo in the blinding inferno – and then a hand was on his arm, another on his face, and the blaze dimmed… reality swam back into focus. Jyn, studying him closely, her expression dark with unfamiliar concern.

“Can you fly?” Her voice was gentle, but urgent. She took her hand from his cheek and lifted his collar to his chin, wiping it.

He drew a shuddering breath and looked down at himself. He’d been sick; he was soaked with sweat and worse. Swallowing, he looked back at her and nodded. Jyn gave his arm a quick squeeze and moved off.

“Let’s go,” said Kay from the co-pilot’s seat, and they were out of the landing bay of Home One, into the star-littered sky far above the green of Endor.

 

* * *

 

 

It was a long way to the Imperial Centre, and planning was not Jyn’s strong suit. She didn’t know what to plan for even if she’d known how, and she hadn’t set foot on Coruscant for twenty-two years. So there was nothing to do during the journey, nothing to pass the time or distract her from her heartbeat, from her racing mind. She wanted more than anything to just switch off, zone out, and be one with the low hum of the ship’s engines and drivers.

Alone in the cargo hold, sitting on a holdall full of weapons, Jyn tried to shut herself down as she had in her cell. It was something she had learned as a child in a cave. Simply push away consciousness and let time pass, everything muted by the dull roar of her rage like a bomb below water.

Now, though, she seemed to have lost the knack.

Cassian. His name was like a hot knife in her stomach. And if they found him – _if_ – how could she possibly face him? Images surfaced, fragments of moments that she had succeeded for so long in fighting away to the darkest corners of her consciousness: how time and again his had been the face that appeared when all was lost; how time and again he had followed her, found her, saved her, when she, selfish and sullen, knew she deserved nothing. Deserved worse than nothing.

He had found her on Jedha, had saved her from a place that crumbled above her and another within her. He had found her on Eadu, had dragged her from the precipice of her grief. He had found her on Yavin, had trusted her, sacrificed his world, offered her something she had not allowed herself to dwell on. He had found her on Scarif, had held her back from the empty follies of revenge.

She had known – had shaken off – what she might have been to him. Perhaps even, in time, he to her. But time had not been granted, and all she had been able to do was hold onto him, and wait for the end.

And it hadn’t come.

What then? That she had survived, had been patched together so easily, while he… She thought of the quick tongue that had been turned on her in savage defence after Eadu, the agile mind that deftly devised innumerable plans and plots on the changing wind.

She slammed her knuckles viciously into the floor of the cargo hold. Justice was a myth.

How could she face him? But how could she not, when at last there was a chance for her to save him as he had saved her, when all was lost and hopeless?

And if she failed, she would only die, as she should have long ago. As for Bodhi and Kay, she took comfort in the knowledge that they hadn’t come for her sake, but for Cassian’s. He, at least, deserved them.

Suddenly, as she never remembered it having done on the beach, the shockwave hit her. All she had pushed back for four years at last rushed forward: the wall poured over her, overwhelmed her, swept her under, the impact pummelling and racking every part of her that she could no longer defend.

It was a long way to the Imperial Centre, and Jyn spent the journey engulfed in desolation.


	5. Coming Down

“Jyn?”

Bodhi’s voice from the ladder was tentative. She wondered how much of her furious, bellowing misery he and Kay had heard. All, she concluded, with bitterness. But finally she’d been lying, curled up in silence, for some time, and they must be nearly at their destination. However exhausted she felt, there wasn’t time for it now. She sat up and looked around.

Blood smeared patches of the wall opposite; her knuckles were a stinging, ragged mess. She screwed her face up and felt the drying salt crack, took a deep breath in and out and felt the air flow without a shudder.

“I’m here,” she said.

She heard him release his breath and start down the ladder to her. He’d got changed. Some lightweight Imperial uniform must have been stashed away somewhere in the ship, a little small even on him but fresher at least than his own ruined clothes.

“We’re nearly there,” he began, not quite masking his nervous glance at the bloodied wall. “I don’t know how we’re going to land but we’re nearly there.”

Again, she inhaled, exhaled, slow and deliberate. “I haven’t got a plan, Bodhi,” she admitted. “You do know that, don’t you?”

To her amazement, he sat down abruptly on the floor facing her and took her hands his, like a child. Like a friend.

“Of course you have,” he said simply. “We’re going to bring Cassian home. That’s the plan.”

Jyn stared at him, at his light smile, and wondered if she’d ever admired anybody more than she did Bodhi at that moment: this slight, honest, earnest pilot who still dared to treat her with kindness. “We haven’t got a landing code,” she said with helpless lucidity. “We haven’t got a clue where he is. We don’t even know if he’s alive. _I don’t know my way_.”

“It’s what we _do_ , Jyn,” he said, giving her hands a little shake. “And we’re doing it for Cassian, right?”

 _Yes_. “For Cassian,” she agreed. She felt her mouth move around his name, realised she had forgotten the flavour of its comforting sibilance. Again, more quietly, “ _Cassian_.”

Kay’s voice came suddenly from above. “If either of you has any idea for landing then do feel free to let me know,” it said. “They’ll be requesting a clearance code any moment.”

Jyn and Bodhi looked at each other for a moment, and sprang up.

“Tell them – tell them it’s Rogue One,” she hollered up. “That’ll wake them up.” She laughed, then, giddily and pointlessly, for the first time since – since when?

“Hilarious,” replied Kay’s voice with no note of amusement.

Bodhi laughed too. “I’ve got a better idea,” he said, clambering up the ladder. Jyn followed him up.

They were pulling out of hyperspace, the stars stretching vividly back into position. She crouched between the pilot seats and watched as the sparkling orb of the city planet expanded into view. It was stunningly beautiful. Coruscant was aptly-named.

Bundled on the floor under Kay’s seat were Bodhi’s abandoned clothes. She grabbed the filthy shirt and began ripping the less stained patches into strips to bind her raw fists.

“I’m assuming you don’t want to know our odds,” remarked Kay, readying the comlink.

“Whatever they are, they’re better than I think,” she muttered grimly. “We don’t even know where we’re going.” She gestured at the glittering spectacle before them, growing every moment.

“We can restrict our search to the Monument Plaza area of the Imperial Centre,” the droid answered with unusual helpfulness. “The chances of his moving far from there in the time that has passed are slim.”

Jyn gave him a grateful smile.

“Not as slim as ours,” he went on, “but slim.”

The comlink crackled and the trio froze. “ _Lambda T-4a transport approaching from 421 by 9, identify yourself: state call sign and clearance code._ ”

Bodhi scrambled to wrest the comlink from Kay’s grasp. “Ah, negative, negative,” he gabbled. “Ah, transport 9176-R, no clearance code, we didn’t expect to be here, ah, requesting urgent landing. Imperial delegates from Endor orbit, repeat, request urgent landing, immediate medical attention.” And then, with emphasis, he added: “Highest priority.”

Jyn’s mouth fell open. The implication was clear. Bodhi had as good as told them the Emperor was injured on board their ship. She marvelled at his audacity.

There was a pregnant silence. This was it. No clearance code, no pass docs, just one outright, outrageous lie. They waited breathlessly.

“Transport 9176-R, you are cleared to land, bay 12.”


	6. Briefing

Colonel Relee Peluan had been to her fair share of emergency briefings in her time with the Alliance. She had even rather precociously called one herself, once, as a Major, which had attracted her a certain amount antipathy from some of her senior officers. She had never, however, been accused of causing the need for one until now, and she was disgusted. Her best course of action while allowing this displeasure to sink in, she decided, was to refocus the conversation.

“‘Made off’?” she echoed mockingly. “You would use the term ‘made off’? Just like that, ‘made off’ with our best Imperial transport? Broke out of prison, assaulted a guard, abducted a pilot and just ‘made off’ with a ship?”

“Fine,” said General Draven. “If you’re so concerned about the semantics, Colonel, she _stole_ it. This is Erso we’re talking about.” Some of the officers gathered in the briefing room murmured wryly. “Are you really so surprised?”

“Your misjudgements promoted her beyond her capacity,” countered General Calrissian, “and those same misjudgements left the flight hangar unsupervised.”

Peluan paled with anger. “You had no problems with her taking the Utapau mission, if I recall, General,” she snapped. “Don’t throw it back as _my_ misjudgement.”

“Watch your tone, Colonel –”

“We’re not discussing Utapau at this point,” interjected Admiral Ackbar. His amphibian voice bubbled with impatience. “This concerns the naval forces as well as military. Your Lieutenant has absconded with part of our fleet and one of our most respected pilots.”

Peluan was about to shoot back a retort, but she was cut off by a movement of white from beside her.

“If you please.” Mon Mothma gently placed her hands on the central table. There was something very affecting about the Supreme Commander’s presence, Peluan reflected. Perhaps it was that the woman always wore such brilliant white robes, so the slightest disturbance to her habitual stillness was emphasised, but with barely a gesture she had the attention of everyone in the room.

“We must continue to treat this as a major incident,” she went on, her expression concerned yet placid, “but in order to do so we must work together.” She turned to Peluan. “Colonel, your operative has once again gone – if I may – rogue. However, our options are limited. Admiral.” With a slight nod, she conceded the floor to Ackbar.

He moved forward and brought up a holoimage of the ship from the table. “This is the T-4a that Erso’s team has commandeered,” he explained. Its blue light cast an eerie pallor over the assembled company as it rotated slowly. “Nobody was on duty to record their flight trajectory and the T-4a’s tracking devices have apparently been disabled. Consequently, we have no way of knowing precisely where they’ve gone.” He flipped a switch, and the projection adjusted to display internal schematics. “The ship is fitted with standard Alliance tracking technology, as you can see here. However, it appears that these drivers have been adeptly disabled. Furthermore, nobody was on duty to record their flight trajectory on departure, so we have no way of knowing where they’ve gone.”

“You’ve really no idea?” came a low voice from behind Draven.

Princess Leia was still dressed for last night’s celebrations on Endor. She and the rest of the ground team had been brought back in haste as the incident became apparent, but the leaves braided into her brown hair and even the considerable amount of moss about her small person did nothing to diminish the air of authority she had: a lifetime of diplomatic training was not so easily disguised.

Ackbar faltered. “Your Highness,” he deferred graciously. She stepped forward in his place.

“I’ve read the key briefings on the flight back from Endor,” she continued, looking around in disbelief. “Am I really the only one to draw a connection between Erso’s sudden call to arms and the riot in Monument Plaza?”

There was a heavy pause, weighted with confusion and uncertainty. Peluan stared for a moment, then scoffed.

“If you’re referring to the placement of Captain Andor there, he is of no concern to her,” she announced. “I thought she had made that entirely plain.”

She suddenly found herself the object of the younger woman’s incredulous glare. “You want to ignore that correlation, Colonel, then fine,” the Princess said. “But missions like the Rogue One Event leave lasting marks on operatives, as I’m sure many of the senior officers here have seen. All I’m saying is that it’s too great a coincidence to overlook.”

“It bears consideration,” said General Draven heavily. Peluan thought he looked shaken. Three years had not reduced his affection for his top spy, she supposed, but the current danger was not new to an agent like Andor, so she filed his apparent emotion away for later examination. With the clipped formality of his military habit, he went on. “Her complete disengagement with the rest of the Scarif survivors does not, on reflection, discount the possibility that their continued safety is a concern of hers, in whatever way someone like Erso experiences such a thing.”

Erso’s emotional scope extending to personal attachment. It was a concept that Peluan had, to her irritation, never contemplated. She shook her head slightly. “Understood,” she answered, “but if the ship is destined for Coruscant then there’s little we can do. We can’t risk going after it at this point. Either they’ll make it back or they won’t.” She bristled slightly and went on. “And if they do, I trust that the assembled company recognises that I expect Erso to be made to answer in full for this insurrection.”

“Because you sure don’t intend to,” sneered another officer from across the room.

“Major Bayer,” interrupted Draven, “if you have an issue with Colonel’s decisions, then you should take it up with her commanding officer.” He fixed Beyer with a hard stare. “Peluan is entirely right. Decisions taken in my line of command are my responsibility.”

Bayer looked away resentfully.

“This is not the matter up for discussion,” Mon Mothma reminded them. “Colonel, we understand, and in fact appreciate, that your recommendations for last night’s skeleton crew were made in a spirit of celebration. The lack of supervision in the hangar is simply, in the circumstances, an unfortunate by-product of this. Furthermore, Erso’s escape could not have been foreseen, and the blame for it will certainly not be laid at your door - or at yours, General Draven.

“To return to the matter in hand, it seems possible, perhaps even probable, that Erso has acted, however rashly, in the interest of protecting Captain Andor, and that she therefore has some intention of returning him to the Alliance, and by extension, to this ship.” She turned to Ackbar again. “Admiral, is Home One able to remain in this system for an additional period until such time as they return, or we decide that the likelihood of their doing so is too low to justify further immobility?”

“You wanna just _sit here_?” Calrissian cut in. “And wait for the prisoner to just wander back?”

Ackbar ignored him. “We can stay, but there’s a shortage of long-range shuttles considering the diplomatic work we now need to do across the galaxy.”

“So how about short-range work from radial carriers?” suggested Leia. “Lando, do you think we can move some of our scouts and fighters into a carrier and send them out to cover a system at a time?”

General Calrissian shrugged. “Clusters? I guess so.”

“That would work,” agreed Ackbar.

This looked like a good point to conclude the meeting, and Peluan realised she faced a choice. Attempting to adjourn the meeting herself would ideally prove that she was unintimidated by the blaze of accusation that had almost just threatened to undermine her. Equally, she might draw attention back to herself and invite more criticism.

But not doing so would also have either of two outcomes, neither of them desirable. The meeting could drag on, more pointless bickering breaking out – always the main flaw of the Alliance. Alternatively, Mon Mothma could draw everything to a close, riding smoothly over the key points, summarising, dismissing. In both of these scenarios, she found herself effaced and ineffectual. Her hard-won authority, however much it might grate on her seniors, was not something she would readily concede to passivity. She wasn’t going to give Bayer a chance; there was something about her, something more than her jealous sniping, that unsettled Peluan.

“So it’s settled,” she said smartly. All eyes turned to her. “We remain here and operate radial diplomatic clusters until Erso returns or we decide she won’t. My thanks to you all for your tolerance and constructive input in the face of this incident. Once again I reiterate my unreserved apologies for this uncharacteristic oversight.” She knew she was being supercilious and caught Bayer rolling her eyes but went on. “With your permission, I will return to my team on the comms deck and disseminate our course of action.”

Relee Peluan congratulated herself inwardly as they dispersed. She’d handled it well, all things considered; you didn’t make it to Colonel in six years without acting above your rank now and then.


	7. Intelligence

Kay was glad of comparison. The odds of their success in this situation with a tried-and-tested strategy such as “lure the enemy into the ship and immobilise them” were so ground-shakingly appalling that they provided some much-needed perspective in this instance, when the course of action they had actually chosen might otherwise have seemed insane. Probability was nonetheless far from on their side, but it was gratifying to know that there were at least worse plans than theirs.

The situation was also improved somewhat by the reduced task force in the landing bay the shuttle was approaching. Kay calculated that troops had most likely been mobilised to the points of unrest across the Centre, drawing them away from flight control. There were now only fifty-one Imperials within direct sight of the ship, comprising a basic flight command, a security task force, and a squad of what looked from here like medical responders.

He predicted that several of these would advance toward the ship as they landed, which would be useful, but the majority needed to stay at medium range if this was going to work.

Their best chance of making it beyond this point was in fact, as Kay had suggested, to rig the entire ship to blow and just make a run for it. But Bodhi had pointed out that they needed the ship to return to once they’d rescued Cassian. Kay had then explained that he had simply not bothered simulating far.

The plan now, in so far as they had one, involved the shuttle’s cannons. The Lambda-class was well-equipped both front and back; he and Jyn would take out as many troopers as they could, as fast as they could, from the cannon-turrets, while Bodhi landed the ship. The targets were far smaller than the cannons were designed to aim at, but provided they stayed at range, Kay estimated a median reduction in Imperial numbers of thirty-four.

Of the remaining targets, some would surge forward to get out of range and would open fire when they exited the shuttle. It was also reasonable to assume that they had sufficient firepower to do damage to the shuttle itself, once stationary. The rest would scatter and raise the alarm.

Then Kay, Jyn and Bodhi simply had to exit the craft, avoid fire, take out the enemy, pick a direction to run and hope that they encountered Cassian.

It was absurdly optimistic, but optimism could not hurt them any more than the scheme as whole most likely would. Not for the first time since flying away from Endor, Kay returned to the distinct conviction that his software had indeed been compromised in reconstruction. He reflected that he should have spent time gathering data to support strategy, to aid in locating his friend, to help them, in short, to do anything less chatoic than running wildly into a hostile citadel and hoping to just stumble across the one person most likely to be hiding. Instead, he had reacted with near-human impulsiveness, trusting only that Jyn would do the same.

He was definitely missing some programming.

Well, it didn’t matter now. They were coming into range.

 

* * *

 

 

Oversight _was_ uncharacteristic for the Colonel. She’d worked her way up through the military factions that had eventually become the Alliance by dint of a combination of incisive perspicacity and, more crudely, sheer nerve. She’d carved out a niche for herself in the communications sector of Draven’s intelligence operations, proving herself as a leader and a visionary. Quick to accept credit, gifted in shifting blame, her meteoric rise had put several noses out of joint – Bayer’s not least, and she didn’t trust Bayer at all – but popularity was an easy sacrifice to make if it meant building… this.

The comms deck was once again filled to capacity with industrious officers, tapping at their consoles, sending and receiving signals, tracking signal paths, encrypting and decoding. The enormity of their key message was almost unfathomable: the Emperor was dead; the Empire would fall. The message stood like a monolith.

But the monolith’s strength was its molecular structure: shuttle dispatches, signal tracers, instructions to agents in remote territories, diplomatic reassurances to nearer civilisations… Peluan surveyed the officers hard at work with satisfaction. From the fragmented disorder she had encountered on joining Rebellion years ago, she had built a robust engine of information. She fancied she could see the information like a shimmering mesh, every glowing thread connecting to another, trembling, responsive, at once unbreakable and unbearably fragile.

One fault in the weave could destroy a world. The Empire’s repeated folly had been to pursue this planet-killer concept. Palpatine had risen by playing factions off against each other, his political acumen second to none. Militarised and weaponised, though, his power took physical form, more easily damaged. Peluan had understood this. Quietly, she and her Rebel subordinates had constructed a machine of much greater power.

Information was her obsession. She was unaccustomed to unpleasant surprises.

It was not that Erso was capable of human emotion that had nonplussed her. On the contrary, Erso’s feelings were something on which Peluan had depended when assigning her for certain missions. Closed and chaotic as the renegade was, Peluan knew – or had thought she knew – that inside her was at least a form of emotion, which, with care, could be distilled into valuable fury and aimed like a mortar at any target.

The unwelcome revelation was rather the fact that those emotions could be connected to anything other than an instinct for self-preservation. She cursed inwardly. Erso had given every sign of aversion to associating with the rest of the Rogue One survivors, and Peluan had taken it as such; only now did it occur to her that Erso’s deliberate estrangement was perhaps, in fact, a product of that very same self-preservation.

A bond of such a sort was not within Peluan’s experience, but incomprehension was not the same as disbelief. For the first time in a great many years, she feared she had drastically miscalculated.


	8. Shutdown

Jyn knew she had only seconds to live. She had been shot to pieces as soon as she’d stepped out of the shuttle. Making it out of the open and into cover, tearing down side-streets and alleys, startling and dispatching unwary Imperials around corners – all this was simply the rapid fabrications of her dying brain. Her ears still rang from crossfire, and as she hurtled chaotically from shadow to shadow, her thigh stung badly; the graze of a bolt that her brain pretended had missed her by an impossible fraction. But as long as some part of her continued to fabricate her survival, she was willing to play along.

With each corner she rounded, she tried to force her imagination to summon Kay and Bodhi, to have them standing there for her to find before darkness finally took her. With each corner, she failed. It was too cruel that even the fantasy her mind fed her as she faded from existence could not save her from dying alone.

Instead, she pressed on. Her blaster pack sounded a warning noise at her: energy low. She hurled it aside, pulling another out from her jacket, and kept running. _Pretend I find him. Please just pretend I see him before I go._

The pale grey of the buildings reached up into the sky all around her. She had forgotten how _tall_ everything on Coruscant was. Hardly any daylight filtered down to these backstreets, lit instead as they were with pale yellow pipes that clawed their way luminously up the duracrete. There seemed to be so few doorways. She thought she remembered the city being busier than this. Perhaps people were staying inside after the riot the night before. She ran on aimlessly, her lungs screaming. If she could keep running in this dream, there was still a chance her mind could serve her one good moment before it was too late.

Another dingy alley connected to this one from the left. She made up her mind to go straight on, toward what looked, from the paler light, as though it might be an open space; as she passed, though, someone flew out of the opening with a cry and barrelled straight into her, knocking her to the wall. They fell in a heap as blaster fire echoed from the alleyway.

The other person was wriggling frantically. Before she could register anything else, they were disentangled and hauled upright by long metal hands.

“Oh, there you are,” said Kay.

Jyn blinked at him, and once again felt the other person slam into her, this time in a hasty embrace.

“You’re alive! You’re here!” Bodhi gabbled. “We had to go on when we couldn’t see you and I’ve never shot someone before but I thought you were –”

“Come on,” interrupted Kay, firing another shot back the way they had arrived and speeding off. Jyn ran after him in disarray, grateful and fearful. Her fantasy had finally complied with her wishes, in part; the end must finally be near. As before, all she could do was keep running.

As she’d thought, the passage opened into a small, deserted square. The dark fronts of shops and cantinas declared them all closed for business. Streets led off in each direction. Kay had stopped in the middle of the space as she and Bodhi clattered into the open behind him. It seemed they could have a moment’s respite.

Bodhi put his hands on his knees, gasping for air. She rested an arm heavily across his shoulders and bent down to catch her breath beside him.

Kay turned to look at them. “We should probably not split up again,” he suggested flatly.

Jyn painfully sucked in another lungful of air and glared up at him. “Well, it wasn’t planned.”

“And which part of this _was_ , exactly?” asked Kay.

Bodhi’s panting sounded almost like laughter. It _was_ laughter, she realised. And then, quite unexpectedly, she discovered that she, too, found the exchange hysterically funny. Somewhere inside, a voice told her that this was probably oxygen starvation. Her brain was most likely on the point of shutting down now.

The masonry behind them erupted in a red flash. Charging into the square from the street opposite was a group of four troopers. She dived to the side, dragging Bodhi with her, as she shot frantically back. Her bolt glanced off the hip of one soldier, sending him staggering. Kay, a blaster in each hand, swiftly took two of them out, but the last fired a shot that hit him square in the side.

Beside her, Bodhi began scrambling to his feet, firing wildly. He was a terrible shot and _why was he getting up?_

He shouted with surprise as Jyn sprang at him, shoving him halfway across the square just as a proton bolt smacked into the wall directly behind where he had been. He was moving with difficulty; Jyn realised distractedly that his leg had not been designed for this level of action.

Kay had taken out the injured trooper and was now moving around gracelessly to try and get a shot at the last, when Jyn heard the clanging footsteps of yet another trooper appearing from the street behind them.

Jyn whirled around to face the newcomer, but before she could even shoot them, it was as if she already had. They dropped their rifle instantly, staggering backwards a step, two steps, leaning against the wall in shock and surrender.

 _Cassian_.

His previous target down, Kay now pointed his blaster behind him, aim levelled straight at the final enemy without a glance.

“NO!” she screamed, flinging her own weapon desperately at Kay’s hand.

She knocked his aim clear in a wide arc; the misfired bolt hit Bodhi in the side and he fell to the ground with a cry, hand pressed to the burning tear in his shirt. Kay hesitated, spinning around to stare between Jyn and Bodhi in confusion, then registered the surrendering trooper across the square.

A small shower of masonry dust sprinkled down in the momentary stillness. The trooper, still supporting himself against the wall, pulled off his helmet.

The side of Cassian’s face was a giant bruise, purple and swollen, his expression of disbelief just visible beneath the dark film of blood that matted his fringe and beard. He was every bit as beautiful as Jyn remembered.

Only a heartbeat passed, only a decade, a world, and then, again, there was no more time. Cassian launched himself forward toward Bodhi as more troopers appeared faintly through the smoke in the alley. Jyn ran across and together they began to haul him up, bolts again starting to blaze around them. Kay, their only guard, fired back blindly through the smoke as they dragged Bodhi to his feet. Finally, they were ready to clear the square. The droid threw a grenade behind them as they fled.

Wordlessly, Jyn and Cassian together supported their whimpering friend, hampered by his weight but moving with speed. Suddenly there was a burst of light and Jyn felt something punch her back.

She had almost forgotten, until then, that she was dying. She thanked her imagination for sending her friends to her before the end, and went down into darkness.


	9. Flight

There were few things that so successfully transported Baze from care as watching his husband train. There was limited training that he himself could do; with the anticipated diplomatic errands added to by the commotion of Jyn’s absconding, today was not a day for cadets and target practice. The two martial tutors were, to all intents and purposes, redundant for now.

But of course, it didn’t matter to Chirrut whether there were recruits to train or not. The fluid, lightning-quick dancing of his polearm was as much meditative as practical. And with friends in danger, and nothing to be done but wait, Baze realised that the release of meditation was important; it was for this same reason that he watched his hypnotic whirling. He almost looked as though he could fly.

They had found a home, and good work, and good friends, and after so many years of having none of these, he knew he was content, and yet he wished, guiltily, for more. Wishing had never been in his nature when he had had everything to wish for. Now satisfaction had arrived, and wishes had attended it. He wished he could hear Chirrut chanting or shouting while he moved, as he knew he must be doing, as he always had done. He wished he could know what had become of Bodhi, and of Cassian, and Kay, and of little sister Jyn, who had once burned with purpose in a way he regretted and envied. Most of all, he wished he had a way to help them.

 

* * *

 

“Get us out, Kay!” Cassian hollered, bringing the hold’s gate up behind them. Bodhi’s hip blazed with pain as Kay dropped him abruptly beside Jyn and made for the cockpit at speed. The shuttle rocked with cannon fire from outside.

The gate secured, Cassian crouched down and helped Bodhi shuffle backward to lean against the wall. “You’re ok,” he panted. He looked terrible himself. “You’re fine, it’s just – it’s just skimmed you.”

Bodhi swallowed and nodded. “Sorry for this useless leg,” he said ruefully.

“Hey, you did good,” Cassian replied. “We’re out, we’re nearly out.” Cassian patted his shoulder distractedly and glanced at the inert form of Jyn nearby. “Are you ok to keep an eye on her?”

Bodhi nodded again.

“It’s just concussion,” the other man said, standing up hastily and making for the ladder to the cockpit as the shuttle lurched again. “That masonry hit her hard but she’ll be fine. ARE WE GOING OR WHAT, KAY?” He vanished up the ladder.

Bodhi gripped a hand to the hole in his shirt and closed his eyes with a groan. They were going to make it out, now; he knew. They wouldn’t get this far, defy all the odds, only to fail now. He also knew that that was exactly the opposite of how probability worked, but that was Kay’s field, and he chose to ignore it.

The shuttle pitched and whined as it heaved into the air, cannon bolts shuddering against the hull. Bodhi opened his eyes; the momentum as they veered through the air pushed Jyn’s hand eerily across the floor. He took a deep breath and shunted himself away from the wall, toward her. With agonising determination, he grabbed her arm and tried to drag her closer to him. He couldn’t.

Another jolt shook the craft; it yawed violently and she slid toward him a little. He took the chance and pulled as hard as he could, finally bringing her close enough to arrange her more carefully. He tried to forget about the cannons and fighters all around and focused instead on laying her out comfortably, tugging off her jacket and folding it under her head, turning her onto her side, everything he’d learned to do at the academy so long ago.

There was a final high-pitched whine, a thundering sound, and at last, the shuttle was stable. They must have made it to lightspeed before even leaving Coruscant’s atmosphere, just like they’d done on Jedha. _It’s what we do_ , he thought to himself, and leaned back against the wall again, weariness overtaking him at last.

 

* * *

 

Cassian let his head sink onto the controls in exhausted relief.

“You look very bad,” observed Kay.

“Yeah, well,” he muttered without looking up. “Interrogation’s a real party.”

The blank bulbs of Kay’s eyes swivelled up and down, taking in Cassian’s disfigured face and battered Imperial uniform. The fingers on his left hand looked all wrong. “More of a party for whoever had that uniform,” he surmised.

The spy straightened up painfully and turned his attention back to the dashboard. “I spared her the hangover,” he said grimly, flipping a switch and shutting down the deflector shields to recharge.

They sat in silence for a while, gazing through the viewport into the blackness.

“They knew,” he growled finally. “I was nowhere near the riot, I wasn’t –” he broke off, searching for the word. “I wasn’t –” He punched the arm of the seat with his good hand and took a deep breath. “ _Involved_. I wasn’t involved.”

Kay cocked his head, apparently waiting for his friend to go on.

“Just busted in and dragged me out,” he continued at length. “Easy. They knew where I was, Kay.”

Cassian had never been caught before. There had been near misses, plenty of those. But he’d always scraped by, dodged, wriggled out. This time, he hadn’t so much as had the chance. They’d been on him as soon as they were through the door, and the next thing he’d known –

He eyed his hand and tried to flex it. It didn’t work. He winced. It hadn’t been the worst part. Everything Imperial always looked so neat, so shiny and clean. But there were rooms, he had now learned, where the doors stayed shut for a reason.

“Did you tell them anything?”

Cassian grunted bitterly. “What could I have told them that wasn’t three years out of date?”

Kay started. “Excuse me?” He turned to stare at Cassian.

Cassian frowned at him from beneath the filth that was drying and cracking on his face. “Three years, not a word,” he said.

“I sent you regular comms,” Kay said quickly, reeling. “I sent them through Major Beyer every twenty-one days.”

There was a beat, then Cassian rested his head back against the seat, his sigh almost a groan. “Then we’ve got a – a problem.”

“I knew I’d missed something,” Kay reproached himself flatly.

But Cassian was too exhausted to worry right now. He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d slept. Two days, he thought, probably. He allowed himself to sink a little in the seat, let his eyes close heavily, ignoring the crunch of blood in his eyelashes. “It’s good to see you, Kay,” he slurred hazily, and was vaguely aware some kind of response. Jyn’s face swam into his mind, staring at him from across the square, and he tried to name the expression on it. Perhaps he just couldn’t find the word for it, or perhaps it had simply had no name. Then he slept, too deeply to dream.


	10. Apprehension

“We’d like to land, please,” said Kay, deliberately avoiding protocol.

It was Lando’s voice that crackled back over the comlink. “Who’s with you?”

Kay had expected the question, but had hoped it wouldn’t come. Somebody in the base would clearly be unhappy that Cassian was back. Still, there was no point in lying.

“Full complement: K-2SO, Commander Bodhi Rook, Captain Cassian Andor, Lieutenant Jyn Erso. Medical attention required on landing.”

Lando’s voice growled back. “You better have Erso ready to be restrained. You guys are in a whole heap of trouble, too.”

 _Obviously._ Kay shook his head despairingly and crushed the comlink with thoughtless ease in his metal grip. To his right, Cassian was still slumped in his seat, his chest moving slowly in a sleep that Kay had hoped not to disturb. But these shuttles were hard to manoeuvre without a co-pilot, and Bodhi was certainly not up to climbing the ladder. He reached out and shoved the man beside him a little more roughly than he’d intended.

Cassian started awake with a gasping cry, reaching to his side instinctively for a weapon; he knocked his broken hand on the seat as he did so, transforming his cry of alarm into a grunt of pain.

“You’re safe,” Kay told him quickly, and watched as his friend reoriented himself.

“Alright,” he said shakily, after a moment. “Where’s this?”

“Moddell Sector. Endor. Queuing the landing process; we’ve been cleared.” Kay looked between the controls and the viewport a couple of times.

“What is it, Kay?” sighed Cassian.

“Nothing.”

During the flight, Kay had run several thousand simulations at a high sample rate, wherein he explained to Cassian either or both of the following facts:

  1. That their mission to rescue him had not actually been under Alliance instruction
  2. That Jyn Erso was currently a fugitive facing court martial



In every simulation, Cassian had refused to co-operate. But Kay had not risked everything to bring him back for nothing, and so resolved to keep quiet.

“Sounds like we’re landing?” came Bodhi’s voice from below.

“Yes,” Kay called back. “Make sure you’re both ready.”

“I’m ready,” said Jyn’s voice. So she was awake. She sounded resolute and resigned.

Cassian shot Kay a quizzical look, to no avail.

It didn’t take long for them to pull in through the narrow airlock into the flight hangar. Visible through the viewport as they came to rest, the heavy military presence awaiting them did not escape Cassian’s notice.

“What’s going on, Kay?” he asked sharply.

“You’re safe,” repeated Kay, undoing his belt and heading for the ladder. It was the only reassurance he could honestly give – although, he reflected as he descended, he was not even sure of that, now.

Jyn had her back to him, standing as straight as she could with her bruised back, waiting for the gate to come down. Bodhi had pushed himself up, leaning against the wall with a hand still clutched against the burnt gash along in his hip, his failed leg shaking unnaturally. Kay turned as he heard Cassian attempting the ladder; with the adrenaline of their escape long since dispersed, he was struggling with it. The droid reached out to help him down, and, to his surprise, found his assistance was not declined.

Cassian’s eyes were fixed on the back of Jyn’s head, confusion just visible on his face beneath the blood and grime; Bodhi, too, was watching her intently, studying her resolute immobility, as the ramp lowered with a hiss.

Without a moment’s pause, four soldiers ran up the ramp, shouting and surrounding her with their rifles levelled, as Colonel Peluan strode toward them.

“Kay, what –” Cassian started forward and found his way barred by Kay’s arm. “ _What?!_ ”

“Lieutenant Erso,” Peluan addressed her coldly. “Good of you to come back. Pleasant joy ride?”

Jyn said nothing; she only held out her arms in front of her silently.

“You can’t!” cried Bodhi from the side of the hold. “Please, you can’t, or what about me, I went too –”

But medical officers were streaming up the ramp, now, cutting them off, and while Cassian stared about him in bewilderment, only Kay could see over their heads as Jyn was cuffed and led roughly away.


	11. Visit

Jyn had shared a prison with an enemy before and had found it tolerable. Back on Wobani, she had passed the time by inventing exciting new ways in which Nail might attempt to kill her, and preparing creative counterstrategies. It had almost kept her entertained. Now, with her ability to tune out reality having deserted her for good, she had spent eighteen days locked in a cell with the single worst person she knew.

There was no distraction here to shut off the constant stream of all her wrongs and regrets. But of all the things she had done, there were two reasons she was here: Utapau and Cassian. And she would apologise for neither.

Utapau. It had been a mess; the Imperials had sprung an ambush, and her orders - to retreat, to hide out and await rescue - might have seemed sensible from a command centre but out in the field she'd known otherwise. They'd have been hunted down and picked off in no time. She'd given the order for counter-attack.

Her team had numbered fifteen when they went in; eight when they came out. The names of the fallen had run tauntingly through her head for two days before she'd shut it off the first time. Now they came through again.

Neyren Kess, jocular pessimist.

Terk Wringser, 18 and afraid, his first mission.

Paula Yarits, silent, resilient, ready.

Ro, their only non-human team member, a Gungan of indeterminate age and boundless courage.

Fema Tolanda and Toora Riscott, who had not ended together.

Fergal Sennoh, father of four, good singer.

Eight good people, eight names, and they had given their lives on her orders. But it could have been fifteen names, it _would_ have been, and she would not have even lived to recite them. It had been an easy choice to make. It was not an easy choice to have made.

And Cassian. _Cassian_. Of all things, of all people, she would not apologise for that, for what it had taken, for what it could have cost, for what it miraculously had not. It was unquestionable. Her vision thickened and fizzed at the thought of him. His disbelief in the square. And what must he think of her? Especially now, when he heard what she had been and what she had done in the intervening years.

He had saved her, and saved her, and saved her, and saved her. She had repaid him with abandonment.

Saving him, at last, was all she had had.

The thought of what he must have undergone was unbearable. She claimed no righteousness over the Imperial interrogators. She had tortured him herself for years. Even now, she knew redemption was impossible. The thought crept into her mind, acidic and oozing, that she had perhaps acted for her own sake rather than for his, a balancing of accounts, maybe. She pushed it away. The hypocrisy was too great to contemplate.

“Timer started,” came the words from outside. She snapped to attention. It must be time for the trial.

The door slid open, and her heart both leapt and sank: it was Cassian.

He’d healed quickly; barring a dark bruise under one eye, and the bandages around his left hand, nobody could ever have guessed what he’d been through. Clean and smart, he stood with an erect bearing that befitted his neat uniform. Every bit the Alliance man. Had he come to lead her to justice? He eyed her intently, critically.

She met his eyes with careful lack of expression. A long moment passed.

Finally, with peculiar formality, he said: “Thank you.”

She looked away then. He felt unreachable to her, alien, and yet at the same time so familiar that she thought she might stop breathing. In the silence, she heard his boots shift minutely, as though he was uncertain of where to stand.

“They weren’t going to get you,” she muttered uselessly. “I couldn’t…” She swallowed and looked back up at him. “I couldn’t let that happen.” Infuriatingly, she felt a hot sting behind her eyes. _Not now, not yet._

He surveyed her again, and his eyes fell on her wrists. He frowned.

She lifted her hands a little to display the cuffs. “No more punching guards,” she said by way of explanation, and gave a weak laugh. _Please not now._

Cassian stepped forward briskly and caught her hands in his. He turned them over, each in turn, and studied them, examined the red marks where the cuffs had rubbed her wrists too closely. She raised her eyes from his bandaged hand, from the places where their skin touched and burned like stars, and watched his expression flicker; a series of unnamed emotions chased across his features too quickly for her to identify. Without warning, he looked back up at her. Pity had come to rest on his face, insufferable pity, and something else, too.

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered. He stepped back and reached into his boot, pulling out a tool of some kind. In a series of deft moves he had the cuffs clicking open and slipping away from her.

Abruptly, his poise vanished: he gave a bitter shout and hurled the cuffs across the cell as hard as he could. She flinched as they slammed against the wall; the sound of them clattering to the durasteel floor seemed to echo for a frozen age.

Cassian rubbed his hand across his mouth, breathing deeply, collecting himself. His uncertainty was obvious now. He looked everywhere but at her. She pressed herself back against the wall, unsure and unsteady. She was sure he must be able to hear the blood pounding in her head, to see the wetness around her eyes. _Not now, please no._

At length, he moved back across to her. Once again he took her wrists in his hands and lifted them up. Her breath caught as he moved his thumb gently over one of the welts. His eyes turned on hers, and there was no mistaking now the sad tenderness that filled them.

It was too much. She couldn’t bear to look at him.

“I’m so –” Her voice broke off in a choked gasp. All at once, the battle was lost as hot tears spilled down her face. “I’m so sorry, Cassian!”

“Hey,” he murmured gently, raising his good hand to wipe her cheek. She gave a shuddering sob, but his hand remained on her face, and he seemed very near, suddenly. “Hey.”

Jyn, at last, dragged her eyes up to meet his.

And finally his hand fell from her face, and his arms were pushing between her aching back and the wall, drawing her in. The hard warmth of his body held close against hers brought back a memory – a detail of comfort and hope that had been erased in all her nightmares since that time. His mouth on hers parted her lips softly and earnestly; regret, impossibly, began to slide away. She twisted her fingers into the hair on his neck, pressing the other hand to his back, feeling his taut frame move beneath his shirt as he gathered her closer. Nothing else mattered.

Cassian kissed her with growing urgency. Whatever else might come, he had thought never to have this moment. His Jyn, his fierce and ragged tearaway, kissing him back now as though life depended on it. Any life. They might have been anywhere, anyone. He forced himself to remain in the moment, not to think about the timer outside, about anything beyond the woman now holding him more tightly than he had ever dared to believe she might. Nothing else mattered.

_Click._

The chrono’s warning. Almost time.

The sound of her soft sigh as they broke apart could have shattered him. He rested his forehead against hers and tried to catch his breath. Her flushed skin mirrored his own insistent, uncomfortable need for her, but time, always time… the story of their lives.

“Put the cuffs back on,” she muttered, her words warm on his cheek. He tightened his hands on her waist in mute protest. “Put them back on,” she repeated more firmly. “Don’t let them say you’re compromised, don’t… don’t get in trouble for me.”

He barked out a short, bitter laugh. He knew that the irony, after everything, did not escape her either. But he also knew that she was right. She was always right. He released her from his hold and collected the cuffs from the far corner. She was weeping without embarrassment.

And now, again: composure; posture; breathing. He’d learnt to wear it convincingly.

He had done many things to regret in his life. Snapping tight cuffs back onto Jyn Erso’s injured wrists and walking out of her bright cell without a backward glance felt like the worst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok I'll be honest I literally screamed and cried while I was writing that so I hope you like it because goshdarn it look long enough to get to this point right? Prepare for More Emotions to come.


	12. From the personal journal of Mon Mothma

_I have noted previously my concern for the personal futures, on the occasion of peace, for those agents from whom our cause has by necessity taken too much and too freely. What can a rebel give when they are no longer rebelling?_

_I return to this thought now with specific reference to Lieutenant Jyn Erso, who faces court-martial on charges too numerous to list here without devolving into tedium, but whose primary cause of offence seems to be an arrogance born of years of independence, a mindset ill-suited to the rigours of war._

_My concern for her is as for several others – that we have welcomed her significant gifts with no allowance for her faults. My heaviest regret is in fact the fear that we as an organisation fail most deeply to provide support where it is most greatly needed._

_The psychological strains of a life such as Lieutenant Jyn Erso’s cannot be truly comprehended even before one contemplates the efforts associated with what is now referred to most commonly as the Rogue One Event._

_There is, however, a notable lack of provision within our structures for support and rehabilitation in this area. It is strongly apparent to me that, in trusting Erso with a command she was temperamentally unequipped to hold, we have failed her in the worst possible way, and now she faces punishment for events resulting from that same failure._

_There is, furthermore, the rather more conjectural matter of her attachment to her erstwhile Rogue One crewmates, from whom she has, at least to the outside eye, made every effort to distance herself. It has even been speculated by some that there might, in their brief association, have been a romantic connection between Erso and Captain Cassian Andor, given his uncharacteristic abandonment of Alliance protocol at her word; it is a speculation that those who know him best (I write primarily of General Davits Draven) dismiss as unlikely, but Andor’s reciprocation or otherwise is perhaps in this instance immaterial._

_We know so little about Erso that it is in any case hard to reverse-derive a catalyst based on her reactions. Regardless, it does not sit easily with me that she should assume full responsibility for her misdemeanours in the light of our neglect of her evident needs. It is almost beyond dispute that – her brutish impatience toward a number of subordinates notwithstanding – her motivations were in the most part well-intentioned._

_Though there have been suggestions from others that the Rogue One event was a self-motivated folly with the aim only of justifying her faith in her father in spite of the Council’s general mistrust of her, I believe that Erso in fact acted with integrity and in the interests of the Alliance._

_The Utapau incident was grossly misfortunate, but even here, I am inclined to accept that she acted in a manner which, in her own judgement, however misguided, aimed to preserve the lives of as many of her team as possible in the face of an unpredictable and unexpected foe._

_This leads me finally to this latest of Erso’s misadventures, her sortie to Coruscant to extract Captain Andor from a perceived yet unconfirmed threat. Her motivations may have been personal, as I have noted; Senator Organa rightly observes that traumatic events such as Andor and Erso, perhaps above all, experienced together are capable of creating a bond that rationality and reason may struggle to interpret or grasp. There is also, however, the possibility that she acted once again with the objective of the Alliance’s security; she perceived a threat to a covert intelligence agent at a time of instability, and effected an extraction in the interests of mitigating a substantial political risk. It is perhaps optimistic to hope that the latter is the case, but were it so, it would to my mind be the strongest recommendation possible for leniency._

_We are, it must also be added, an organisation whose foundations rest on defectors and radicals. We are termed “rebels”, and to find a true rebellious spirit among us should form no surprise. Few of our most esteemed operatives can claim to have conducted themselves by the figurative book at all times, and indeed many of the greatest achievements of this Alliance have been built on the courageous improvisations of soldiers such as Lieutenant Erso._

_I am acutely aware, finally, that despite my personal misgivings in the matter and my desire (perhaps wrought of passive guilt) for clemency, in all of this there is also the need to give a clear demonstration of discipline and justice. We are, however much it might be wished otherwise, as much a military facility as a political one, although it is my hope that the galaxy can be restored to unity with as little need henceforth for martial involvement as possible. But this being at present the case, infractions against the system must necessarily be handled in accordance with established procedure, particularly at a time such as this, when the galaxy most requires clarity of leadership._


	13. Trial

Cassian would have preferred another venue. The council hall was too large. Those not involved should not have permitted to attend, he felt; it should have been a private trial, not some kind of dramatic spectacle to fuel ill-informed mess-hall gossip. But he had had no say in the matter. He was, at best, a bystander in the whole affair.

He also understood that there had been very few disciplinary cases on this scale within the Alliance, and certainly none of this profile. It was a perfect opportunity for the Alliance, triumphant, to make an example of how insubordination would be handled in the newly-liberated galaxy. Under the circumstances, he had little hope of that example being one of lenience.

The chamber was startlingly magnificent compared to the functional plainness of most of the ship. It was dripping with the curious opulence of the old Mon Calamari style: pearlescent scupltures twisted up the walls in shades of aquatic jade and blue, and the floor was polished to a liquid sheen that reflected the ceiling above, giving everyone that stood on it the curious impression of floating like a waterflower halfway between two identical planes of grandeur. Half the width of Home One’s uppermost deck, with full-length viewports at the far end that offered a vast, spectacular vista of the cosmos in which they hung, it was a perfectly-placed lesson in insignificance.

It worked. The chatter of onlookers subsided as Jyn was led in by two guards; close to the front as Cassian was, even from here she looked impossibly small, a smudge of indifferent prison khaki in the towering space. She glanced over her shoulder, caught his eye and immediately looked away.

Cassian’s insides writhed. He had left her with no assurance of his loyalties, no promise of support, no conviction that he was not, after all, just a Captain of the Alliance again; one dishonest kiss to test her motivations, a spy in all things.

He had simply left. What could he have said?

Mon Mothma stood. Beside her were seated General Draven and Admiral Ackbar. Her clear voice carried easily through the peculiar hall.

“Lieutenant Jyn Erso,” she began gravely, “You are charged with the following: two counts of fighting or threatening behaviour; three counts of ill-treatment of subordinates; two counts of misconduct on operations; one count of using force against a sentry; one count of absconding with an Alliance vessel for non-approved use; two counts of wilful endangerment of Alliance forces.”

Beside him, Bodhi gripped Cassian’s arm. Cassian pressed his jaws together so tightly his teeth ached. The combined sentence for those charges was several lifetimes.

Jyn, between her two guards, swayed slightly, but remained mute.

Colonel Peluan was called; she rose from the front bench. “I address the matter of the incident on Utapau first,” she began, turning to Jyn. “As your commanding officer, I relayed explicit orders to you through Major Bayer at the precise point of enemy engagement. You outright flaunted those orders, leading directly to the deaths of nearly half of your team.”

Cassian had assessed Peluan as ambitious, and had no doubt that she felt the failure as a keen blot on her own record. But to see Jyn trembling like she was at the aggressive phrasing of the charge made his blood roar in his ears. Peluan was putting the boot in; there was no need for –

“ _Furthermore,_ ” the Colonel continued smoothly, “your persistent mistreatment of your subordinates on preceding sorties speaks of a disdain for discipline such as I have rarely encountered. Your inability to connect with your teams on a personal level is doubtless a contributory factor to your utter lack of regard for their personal safety.”

“ _My_ lack of regard?” Jyn erupted suddenly.

Peluan paled with fury. “You disobeyed direct orders,” she hissed.

“Those orders would have killed us all!” Jyn returned viciously. “I acted to save as many of my team as I could and don’t –” she shook her head with a warning glare “– don’t you _dare_ say I didn’t know them, I –”

“Please.” Mon Mothma was on her feet once more, currents of dismay troubling the usually placid waters of her countenance. “Lieutenant, your argument is noted, but your time to speak will be granted later. Colonel, our thanks for your detailed summary.”

A less-trained ear would have found nothing to wonder at in her delivery, but Cassian was a spy, and he detected a note of something approaching revulsion in the way she addressed Peluan. The Colonel was a hard woman to like. But then, reflected Cassian, so was he.

He realised that he, too, was shaking, as Bodhi tightened his grip on his arm. “She’ll be alright,” came the pilot’s small voice from beside him. “It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

His friend’s boundless capacity for optimism was a marvel, but he knew better than to trust pretty follies. For no real reason, it occurred to him for the first time that Bodhi might have understood something about Cassian and Jyn before they had even really understood it themselves. It was probably all that hope he kept bubbling inside him that let him so easily see love where it – he caught himself, appalled. What did he know about that?

And yet. And yet he knew about her. That, at least, he was certain of. And, which was more surprising, he realised that he understood her. He felt a knot tighten in his throat at the discovery.

He couldn’t focus. Everything besides the khaki figure that stood in silent misery before the court was a blur. He watched the shape of her shoulders beneath the jumpsuit, how they made visible the effort of her self-control as accusations and allegations flew unrelentingly her way. The room swam around her, suddenly gaudy in its submarine lavishness, an overwhelming and unfitting frame for her plain simplicity.

Detail was gone. His hard-won skill, his ability to capture and store every detail of a scene, was smothered to nothing by Jyn’s lonely wretchedness, by how much he wanted to hold her up, to promise her that there was no blame, no recrimination. By the knowledge that he could not make that promise.

Bodhi’s hand gave his arm a little shake. Cassian realised that he had been called forward. Everyone was looking at him expectantly. Everyone but Jyn, still facing away, still struggling hard to give an impression of stillness.

Composure. Posture. Breathing. He felt himself assume the shape of an officer as he moved forward and stood level with Jyn, a little way apart. He didn’t look at her, nor did he feel her turn to look at him. Good.

“Captain Andor.” It was General Draven, gravely impassive. “In your view, as our agent on the ground in the Imperial Centre, did Erso’s actions interfere with your assignment, or otherwise compromise our strategic positioning?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

Cassian nodded curtly. “If I may, sir,” he added, “with the greatest respect I would go so far as to say that I did not have an assignment that could be interfered with.”

There was a murmur. Draven folded his hands. “Go on.”

“Sir, I was placed on Coruscant three years ago after being declared conditioned to –” he closed his eyes. That wasn’t the phrase. He had dreaded this, in front of everyone. He could remember it in the language of his boyhood, but... He was wasting time, losing his way. He tried another tack. “- when I was able.” He sensed Jyn react somehow, and didn’t dare look at her. “I believed I was stationed there with a view to being somewhere as harmless as possible. The light – the likelihood of encountering useful intelligence at that stage in proceedings was low, and I believe the Alliance trusted that if my condition led me to betray myself as a rebel operative, I would at that time be dealt with quickly with little risk of further questioning.”

Draven nodded, unreadable. Relee Peluan, beside him, regarded him with her head tilted in a display of ostentatious concern. Major Beyer, on Draven’s other side, pursed her lips in apparent irritation.

“At first I awaited instruction,” he continued, “but none came. I have since been informed that K-2SO endeavoured to send me communications regularly, but I did not receive these.”

Major Bayer’s eyes widened in apparent surprise. She turned to Draven. “I did authorise these communiques, sir. I can bring up the records of transmission.”

Peluan tipped her head to the other side. It was aggravatingly condescending. “Are you sure, Captain, that you did not receive these messages?” she asked. “I only ask because it’s possible that your –” she gestured with an apparent attempt at tact. “That with your condition, you might have somehow neglected to decrypt them?”

Cassian met her gaze levelly, forcing himself to ignore the hot tendrils of mortification creeping up his neck. “I assure you, madam, my _condition_ is linguistic only.” He gritted his teeth behind a polite smile. “It certainly doesn’t affect my ability to receive a transmission,” he finished tersely, “on _condition_ that one was sent.”

There was a scattering of uncomfortable laughter from some of the assembly behind him and Peluan flushed angrily. _Bitch._

“Those transmission records, Major,” she snapped at Bayer. Bayer’s nostrils flared in sullen irritation as she turned and left.

Draven rested his hands on the table and leant towards Cassian. It was a movement of disguised urgency in a language they alone understood. “You were saying.”

“In my opinion, sir, Lieutenant Erso acted with primary concern for the welfare of the Alliance on hearing of the change in strategic…” he sighed, gave up, went on. “She couldn’t have known that I had no information to share under interrogation, if captured.”

Draven’s expression shifted minutely. _Apologetic_ , Cassian realised, and understood with cold dread what was coming next.

“Is it possible,” he asked slowly, “that Lieutenant Erso’s concern was of a more personal nature?”

Cassian heard the muttering behind him grow and subside. He was desperate to steal a glance at her at least. He couldn’t. “I’m sure you’d have to ask her that,” he said stiffly. “I offer you my strongest assurance that I had no reason to believe so.”

It wasn’t, technically, a lie.

Peluan cut in. “Lieutenant?”

He heard Jyn draw a deep breath, then nothing.

“Lieutenant, you were asked a question.”

“Not directly,” came Jyn’s low reply.

“Is it possible –”

Draven held his hand up and Peluan subsided. “Thank you for your assistance, Colonel.” He turned to Jyn, his contrite reluctance undetectable to all but Cassian as he went on. “Can you confirm your motives for us, please, Lieutenant Erso. You are not obliged to elaborate too robustly.”

Cassian felt her hesitate. Then –

“You have…” Her voice shook. “You have no idea _about anything_. You have no idea about me. About this – this man. You leave us both to rot for years for your own ends and turn us into what? Prisoners? Slaves? Whatever motivation I had was better than any you’ve _ever_ given me, _and at least as good as those you’ve taken from me_.”

He turned and looked at her at last, saw her face in profile, the set of her jaw, how the upward curve of her nose sang a sweet note in her dark scowl, how her white fists shook, fiery and defiant and tattered and reckless. Half of him soared, half of him plummeted; she could have pinned her impetuous mission on loyalty to the Alliance, could have promised she acted for the good of all, and yet, rash to the last, she had damned herself, damned herself just so she could tell him something true. Oh, yes, he loved her. He loved her more than anything. She finally turned to him, her eyes blazing.

 

* * *

 

 

Jyn finally turned to Cassian, her heart pounding… and his gaze met hers for a moment, coolly indifferent, before he looked away. He might as well have punched her. The mirror lake on which she seemed to stand now rippled unstably below her feet, a nauseous mire.

She realised then how easily she’d been led. How simply she’d been tricked again. She had found him out for the liar he was on Eadu; convincing and uncompromising. But in her desperation, she’d forgotten. In her desolation, she’d exposed herself.

What a laughably effortless weakness to present. He’d given her a dazzling performance, a real triumph of a show, and she’d taken the bait so quickly, so eagerly; she’d handed over the keys by choice, _by her own choice_ , giving him free rein to assess, analyse, evaluate, dissect… and for what?

 _For what?_ she wondered.

She gave in. She suddenly found it was easy, once again, to let reality revert to a low hum of white noise. Good. It would be useful from now on.


	14. Justice

Colonel Relee Peluan had been satisfied with the sentence. Life was the minimum that the charges warranted, in the circumstances. Judging by her grey blankness as they had led her away, Erso would not cause more trouble.

The door slid open and she went through.

“You wanted to see me, sir.”

Draven turned to face her. “Relee. Have a seat.”

Her first name. It was surprising, but promising. It occurred to her that, with her troublesome Lieutenant dealt with, the time might have come to discuss her own progression. It might still be too soon after her own apparent miscalculations, of course, but she could steer the conversation if the opportunity arose, and she knew she could steer towards an opportunity whatever the starting point. She seated herself tidily at his desk, stark and functional, like the rest of the room.

Draven remained standing and regarded her with a faint, strange smile. The unfamiliar expression seemed to score the lines on his tired face more deeply.

“I have been speaking to Major Bayer,” he told her. “She appears to have been the source of several errors in communication that could have caused significant problems for our cause.”

She nodded. She had never liked Bayer, and if those errors could be traced to her, then so much the better.

“It appears that I have underestimated you for too long and in too many ways, Relee.”

She smiled back placidly, and waited for him to go on.

“I even once considered that you might be an Imperial agent,” he told her. “But you are not, are you.”

“No, sir.” It was true.

“Major Bayer is not fond of you.”

“No, sir. Sir, if I may –”

He cut her off with a gesture. “No obsequious modesty this time, please, Relee.” he said. “It is I who owe you the humility, with a further apology: I have held you as resourceful, motivated, and ambitious to a fault,” he continued, walking away from her and looking out of the viewport, “but it never occurred to me to consider you a genius.”

It was irresistible; she fizzed with excitement. Whatever his peculiar air might signify, this sort of accolade was almost beyond what she had imagined. Almost. “Sir –” she began again.

“Tell me, Relee.” He turned back from the viewport to face her. “When you promoted our troubled former colleague to Lieutenant, did you anticipate that her impetuousness might lead to perhaps fatal complications? It seems unlikely that one of your prodigious abilities did not.”

The fizz began to turn into a sickly bubbling. What was he –

“Clearing the comms deck that night. I believe you used the phrase ‘uncharacteristic oversight’. I beg to differ, Relee.” Draven’s drawl was increasingly charged. “It was neither uncharacteristic nor oversight.”

“Sir, I assure you –”

“Did you send word of Cassian’s location to the Imperial Centre instantly, or did you wait for things to hot up a little first?”

“I’m not an Imperial, sir!” she burst out wildly, all semblance of self-possession deserting her.

“No, you’re not!” he shouted. “You’ve found a better ship to steer, haven’t you, Relee!”

Her mouth fell open. He was leaning across the desk now, rage painting his face crimson and knuckles white.

“Work your way up the winning side until it’s yours, isn’t that right?” he bellowed.

“Sir, please,” she begged, her eyes filling with panicked tears. “What possible reason could I have to wish harm on Captain Andor?”

“He’s a clever man!”

“Sir! I stationed him with nothing but concern for his health, his safety, all the reasons I put to you in my proposal, he was –”

She broke off with a cry, beseeching, terrified; Draven’s hand was at the collar of her uniform, dragging her roughly upright. The chair toppled as he slammed her to the wall, his face in hers, twisted with disgust.

“But it turns out he wasn’t the only person clever enough to see through you,” he spat. “You pinned one too many things on Major Bayer, Relee. She didn’t like it.”

She was sobbing now, petrified, struggling desperately against the general’s iron grip.

“Send your damn hero renegades into ambushes all you want,” Draven growled at her. “ _But you endangered my best agent._ ”

The hard barrel of a blaster shoved roughly against her side and she froze with a shuddering gasp. The cold fury of Draven’s snarl was the most terrible thing she had ever seen.

In that frozen moment, she saw the stone towers of her aspirations blow easily away into sandstorms. And there, dark and heavy, revealed like a rock beneath the whirling dust, was her best, her last, her only hope: quick and painless.

_Oh, but if it had worked._

Relee Peluan closed her eyes with a rueful, resigned sigh.

Then it was quick, at least.


	15. Transfer

No light reached here. There was, at times a low thumping, or rumbling, or some other muffled, distant evidence of a world somewhere above, but little else to disturb the cold weight, miles below the surface.

If you went far enough down, like this, noise was only sound; light became dark; most of all, buoyancy turned to compression. It was tight enough to crush you. Tight enough to hold you together.

Jyn was passing the time.

But something was nudging against her, forcing her up. The distant thump was starting to sound like words. She tried to go back down but the light was beginning to push through. She was rising too fast.

“You’re being transferred.”

Jyn broke through the surface, dizzy and unready, into the bright, painful light of a cell. Someone was hauling her upright. She looked around unsteadily, panting, adjusting. She became aware of the cuffs digging into her wrists again, of the guard leading her out into the corridor.

She remembered now. She was scheduled to be transferred to a detention facility somewhere in the mid Rim.

The corridor was too bright as well; she tried to blink spots from her vision as she was led up toward the flight deck.

It wouldn’t be as bad as Wobani, she knew. The Alliance attempted at least to give an impression of care. It wouldn’t be a labour camp, for sure.

She was adjusting now and took a glance at the guard. She didn’t recognise him, didn’t think she’d ever met him, even. But then, the nondescript uniform made everyone look pretty much the same. That was the point.

Well, born in prison, die in prison.

They were nearing the hangar when it happened. Something rammed into her from behind – some _one_ , and the guard was sent flying to one side with a vicious blow, sliding insensibly down the wall. The cuffs fell from her wrists in a flash, and she found herself spun around roughly to face her rescuer.

It was Cassian. Of course it was Cassian. It was always Cassian. It had always been Cassian. She wanted to punch him, to scratch his face till it bled, to make him _hurt_ , but somehow, though her arms had been freed, she couldn’t make them move.

His hands held her face, his expression sincere and urgent, and her rage blew to splinters.

“I love you,” he told her. His kiss was fierce, abrupt. “I love you.”

She chose to believe him.

They ran, then, hand in hand, and he seemed to know where he was going. Alarms began to sound and she heard guards running towards them from an adjoining corridor.

Two figures appeared ahead of them.

“Go on, little sister,” said Baze cheerfully.

The guards approaching found themselves cut off.

“Get out of the way! Move!”

“Pardon? Sorry?” Baze was feigning honest confusion, his bulk blocking a considerable portion of the corridor.

“Who said that?” called Chirrut, turning left and right in innocent, blind curiosity, his staff catching guards’ ankles as he moved. “Oh, I’m sorry, did I trip you…?”

Jyn and Cassian kept running, laughing chaotically, their hands twisted together in tight heat. They burst into the wide space of the hangar and ran on, Jyn staring wildly around at the deserted space. A small woman, slightly younger than her, stood next to a tiny shuttle, waving.

They reached it at last and Jyn began to scramble inside, glancing over his shoulder.

“Thanks,” he muttered to the young woman, turning back and starting to scramble in after Jyn.

Leia smiled at the ceiling. “ _I didn’t see anything_ ,” she said to the man who wasn’t there.

 

* * *

 

 

Bodhi wriggled around in the pilot’s seat. His friends were flushed and ragged, their smiles something luminous, a sight he had never witnessed before. Jyn was gripping Cassian’s shirt, pushing him to the wall, their kiss fragmented with mirth as he slid his arms around her. He thought it might the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“I suppose we _could_ just sit here until they arrest us.” Kay interrupted from beside him.

“Anywhere!” shouted Cassian, breaking himself momentarily away from Jyn’s hysterical, euphoric embrace. “Just fly! Now!”

Bodhi began to take off. “Kay-Tu said you might want to check out Mantooine?” he called over his shoulder.

Cassian darted forward and smacked the droid’s head. “Ignore him!”

Bodhi shrugged. An in-joke, he realised. There was plenty of time to learn these things. They had the rest of their lives.

They lifted out into the stars, letting the vastness of Home One fall away for the last time. He felt Jyn’s hand land on his shoulder and glanced up at her for a moment. She was radiant, her giddiness subsided to quiet, bright-eyed optimism. Cassian stood beside her, one arm around her waist, the other wagging a warning finger lightly at Kay.

Bodhi smiled peacefully and looked back to the viewport. Before long, the million diamond stars flickered and stretched out into just so many thin lines, a tunnel of brilliant white strands that reached ahead of them, pointing them toward freedom at the speed of light.


End file.
